Holiday expenses

The holidays are such an expensive time of year that financial institutions market ways to save for it . . . obviously, there has to be room for savings here!

I look for free photo opportunities and print our family pictures (taken by a friend or a relative) for our Christmas cards. I usually get our photos for just some shipping and handling. One year I got abotu 100 of them for around $18. If you're interested in this, check out the freebies page and/or leave me a comment including your e-mail address. I won't publish it, but if I send you referrals to some of the photo sites, we both get free photos, which I would love.

For our Christmas letters, the paper can be really cheap. This year, however, we had paper lying around. My daughter gets irritated at how busy we get - so do I, in fact. This year, I've been looking for ways to draw her into the process, so it's more family time. She is an avid artist. I put a stack of paper in a "special bag" - a plastic one I found on the closet floor - and asked her if she'd like to decorate one side of the papers, explaining that many people buy special fancy paper for their letters. I offered to buy it, but said I'd rather have her decorate it. She was flattered, she's involved, and I hope most of the people receiving the letters will prefer to get her drawings - whether or not it has anything to do with Christmas :-) Her fave is dogs. I recommended drawing dogs with wreaths around their necks or santa hats on or something. So far, we have some reindeer because she thought that was like Christmas . . . they are very cute, and very kid.

In past years, I tried to find creative ways to use what I had and make things - like calendars and ornaments and Christmas cards. This year, we're skipping the cards - I ended up spending more on cards than I do on fancy envelopes, so we're sticking with a letter. It took a long time - it was cool, but not cheap . . . no cards this year. If you're a card person, check out Half Price Books - they have cards cheaper than I can buy envelopes & they have quite a selection right now of first quality cards. (This is also a great place for boxed thank you's and birthday cards).

I also nixed the calendars this year - I wasn't doing it the best way. I highly recommend the Creative Memories calendars, however - put together a digital one (available in 2 sizes that cost less than the other way I was doing it and take less time), print as many as you need for family members, and the Creative Memories pages come off to be ready for a scrapbook when you're done with the calendar part. There is a regular contributor to this site who sell them. Leave me a comment and I'll gladly send you a referral, so she gets credit, unless you already havea relationship with someone for this.

I'm still all about homemade gifts. If you sew or quilt, consider hot pads that are either a set of a few holidays or non-holiday specific, so they'll get maximum use out of it. I like using a basket weave pattern for them, which is easy to find, uses strips and goes very quickly - I make 9 inch square ones because I'm constantly getting burned . . . my family expresses concern, but accepts my "I'm OK" a lot more quickly than most people would. I just get burned a lot . . . Anyway, the hot pads combine well with a jar of homemade jam or soup, and you can get inexpensive magnetic note pads that fit the theme well. My mom makes wonderful aprons. Those seem like too much work to me, but if you're into that, what a great holiday baking gift that can be used all year!!

Kids can get involved in gift-giving, too. There are many kids activities that have multples in them. If you exchange with your kids' friends, get them a kit that has several activities they can make for their friends. There are many magnet sets they can paint, key chain sets, etc. My favorite place to get these is JoAnn Etc. They have a larger selection than Michaels here, and get on the mailing lists for both - you can use their coupons at either place and save 40% off of regularly priced items most of the time (one at a time). This also draws kids into the process, and grandparents and other relatives really do enjoy them. I would recommend that you find something practical, though - something that could actually be used, at least for adults. There are many good options out there.

For kids' gifts, my favorite thing to do is get a bunch of art supplies. These get kids excited, they are consumable, and you can get them cheap, so you can fill a gift bag with them. To do this cheap, look for clearance school supplies at OfficeMax, for instance, and also swing through the dollar spot at Target - these go on sale for 50% off after the holidays, and there are multi-packs of bubble (and other things that aren't Hallween specific) on clearance right now. Half Price books has many coloring books and activity books, puzzles, etc. If you have multiple kids you buy for, consider a multiple-page pack of stickers & dividing them. Kids really don't get as excited about several of the same sheets as they do about several different sheets opened - if you buy for 4 kids, find 4 multipacks and divy them up - you'll get multiplied excitement. Again, these can be purchased at Michaels (better for stickers, I think) with your coupons. Same thing works with multi-packs of decorated pencils . . .

I'm sure there are millions of idea. If you have another one to share with us, leave a comment with your contributno & I'll post it for all of us to share & enjoy! Have a great weekend!